The second release in seven months from San Diego pop wunderkind Wavves — Nathan Williams, to his skater bros — continues his loner's perspective on teenage California. I grew up in Texas, where (maybe you've heard) we ride horses to school and shit in outhouses, so this lyrical material is all a bit new to me: weed, beach, sun, goths, punx, girls.

Williams, who's part of the back-to-cassette movement, channels his nervy (suburban?) energy into three-chord garage-pop songs filled with overblown washes of fuzzy guitars and backed by thumping drums, maracas, and a broken synthesizer or two. His melodies, whether delivered in an affected falsetto (closer to Animal Collective than the Beach Boys) or a grumpy baritone, are simple and hummable to a fault — without the energy of the distorted cassette recording, I have a feeling the songs would be a bit too cloying.

That said, the album includes a few ambient and instrumental tracks based in the same instrumentation, and these show Williams's capabilities not only as a punk songwriter but as an investigative musician stretching to combine the instant gratification of pop with more experimental ideas. Perhaps by Wavvvvves he'll have it down.

Is 2010 the Year of the Girl? Many have argued that the descriptor "indie music" means nothing more or less than "bands Pitchfork reviews" these days, and the claim was never more true than last year

Wavves | King of the Beach What greatness might have ensued if Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes had suffered Jay Reatard's abuse just a little longer?

Fall Music Preview: Sounds abound As the autumnal equinox fast approaches, there’s plenty of action statewide and no genre left behind from Downcity to down south to the highly-anticipated return of a local live landmark — the Met Café, now located in the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket.

Bass Box | Mother Box The debut full-length from Bass Box is worth a listen if only for its originality. I can't remember an album that explores as much of the contemporary musical canon — rock, pop, folk, jazz, R&B, gypsy, tango — all without use of the drums.

Buck Edwards | Loaded Gun We don't get a whole lot of cowboy-hat country in Portland — Travis James Humphrey would be an exception — so Buck Edwards is something of an enigma. Is his twangy, '50s-style rockabilly and pop country completely on the level?

The digital delight of Space versus Speed Since 2000, we've had the Popsicko, Rocktopus, As Fast As (three albums), Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia, and now Space versus Speed. All with Spencer Albee as principal songwriter and frontman. Seven full-length records.

Robyn reclaims her identity en route to pop stardom There are some pop stars for whom every record requires a reinvention of their persona. But what if your persona is just yourself, and you've spent your career rejecting the urge to create controversy to make people pay attention to you? For pop chanteuse Robin Carlsson, a/k/a Robyn, the R-word itself causes consternation.

The perfectionist persona of Natalia Kills The British-born Natalia acted in BBC television and radio comedies (starting at age nine) before morphing into a musical career that has seen her adopt the stage name Natalia Kills — which describes her lethal combination of dark themes and anthemic synthpop.

FATHER MURPHY | ... AND HE TOLD US TO TURN TO THE SUN | July 29, 2009 Harking back to an America where one's own lonely voice was the only radio and a BBQ meant a spit in the middle of the desert, Torino's Father Murphy hide detuned industrial textures within stripped-down, spacy folk instrumentation, like a man in a black hat picking up a bullet-riddled guitar with which to serenade his captives.

SOUNDCARRIERS | HARMONIUM | May 27, 2009 The first album from this Nottingham-based band is California dippy: whispered female/male harmonies, slack flutes, swinging drums, comping Hammond organs, and a bass player who finds basic funk riffs in every progression.

THE MOVING PICTURES | May 12, 2009 If one way that bands tie themselves to the past is through sonic reference — Fleet Foxes calling forth Crosby, Stills and Nash, or Animal Collective channeling the Grateful Dead — then there's been a number of bands who tie themselves to the past through cultural reference.

VARIOUS ARTISTS | OPEN STRINGS: 1920S MIDDLE EASTERN RECORDINGS | May 06, 2009 Over the past year, Honest Jon's has released three compilations culled from more than 150,000 78s of early music from the EMI Hayes Archive: music from 1930s Baghdad, early West African music recorded in Britain, and a more general compilation that moved across country lines and the first half of the 20th century.

PAPERCUTS | YOU CAN HAVE WHAT YOU WANT | April 14, 2009 Hidden under reverb and aggressive analog production, the first sung lyrics on You Can Have What You Want belie what seems to be a cheery record title: "Once we walked in the sunlight three years ago this July."